I'll start with a humiliating confession; Sandi Patti drove me to listen to heavy metal when I was a young believer. Skeeter Joe can confirm this, and Mark probably can as well. Now nothing against her personally, but she and other CCM artists, as well as many in the "evangelical" and "fundamental" music scenes, did not exactly present a compelling case for me to abandon Van Halen and such. Quite a few of my friends, including one of the guys who led me to Christ, stuck with Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin instead of CCM.
Why? Sad to say, I've become persuaded that the vast majority of CCM artists--not to mention most of us in church--haven't developed a very good sense of genre. Most CCM "metal" comes across as nasal and wimply--and the one band I can think of that doesn't fell into apostasy. CCM "pop" comes across as simply saccharine. Worship music comes off, in general, as anything but worshipful. CCM "rap"?
Well, thank goodness they don't get THAT genre "right." ;^) In general, , though, CCM is like that sweet potato and marshmallow dish they serve at Thanksgiving; appealing to kids to a degree, but utterly sickening to anyone with taste.
Not that my youthful music choices were anything to brag about, obviously, but believers have some work to do here. How to start?
Might be good to start at the CD player with some Bach or Handel, or Beethoven & Mozart.
Know Your Lifts: The Romanian Deadlift (RDL)
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3 comments:
I don't know when it started, but at some point a majority of Christian artists started this style of whispering the lyrics. I hate it. I can whisper a song as well as anybody, that doesn't take talent. If you can sing, belt it out. If you can't sing, drive a truck.
kingdavid
I fell out of love with CCM within a few years after college. It started happening around the time I realized I was "allowed" to, I think. I will say that I'm sure there is still some excellent stuff out there, but the genre as a whole is too mixed quality-wise for me to feel like it's worth wading through these days. It's not worth it when there's stuff like excellent jazz, eclectic stuff like Bela Fleck where "the music is really the thing" apart from slavery to genre, appearance, etc., good authentic country and country-influenced stuff like Union Station, and even pop-country, much of which has a Christian worldview driving it even if it occasionally violates evangelical pieties. ;-) (Of course there's junk in there as well.)
And, of course, the great "original" Christian musicians like Bach are always winners.
look for Greg Buchanan - harpist. He plays it joyfully. I've seen him perform. Listen and you'll think that he has a couple of others backing him up. :^)
(Actually, Bert, I have only your testimony that you ever listened to anything harder than talk radio.)
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